Miss Julie

A televised Royal Shakespeare Company production of August Strindberg's classic play. Miss Julie (Helen Mirren), a 19th century aristocrat's daughter, tests the new-found power of her femininity by taunting Jean, a servant in her father's house. Outside, the members of her father's estate are having their midsummer's eve dance, and shouts of raucous laughter fill the night air. Jean knows his place, cowers in the presence of even his master's boots, but he has dreams of being something more; he doesn't like the disdain with which Miss Julie asks him to kiss her shoe. He turns his anger into a game and manipulates the young woman into trading secrets with him.